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Pausing at the Acqua Alta bookshop

On our way to the Ponte Minich, the next bridge on the list we passed by Venice's signature Acqua Alta bookshop. It's exactly what the best second hand bookshops should be: Stranger-than-most and whimsical with a musty smell and quiet corners for reading and discovering unusual reads. Throw in an eccentric owner, a canal-side back entrance and gondolas serving as storage space for books, and you have the sort of place you can lose yourself in for a morning.

There was no time for browsing (not even for books about the bridges of Venice...) but Adeline had a quick walk up the ’book staircase’ in the back courtyard, which I think it’s safe to say is the only one of it’s kind in the world.

For a city with the sort of ’romantic-olde-world-sight-around-the-corner’ character that Venice oozes it’s surprising there aren’t more bookshops woth Dickensian characters in Venice. There are more than a few, yes, but most are specialty or rather ordinary-looking neighbourhood bookshops. Acqua Alta is trademark Venice, and singularly so.